A small squeak of annoyance

Vecchi strumenti. Photo by -Zelig-.

Recently I’ve been working on a solution to a problem on calendars in South Italy and Sicily. A few cities have calendars which start in the autumn. The assumption is that this is connected to the autumnal equinox, but I’m not so certain. The autumnal equinox makes great sense if you have geometrical astornomy, but these calendars pre-date the accurate astronomy of later Greece. I think it could be tied to other observations. There’s a problem in proving this though. I need to corroborate some of my assumptions with independent evidence. Working with Greek cities this should be easy, but the Greek cities in Sicily don’t have that good a historical record. However, there is also the possibility of looking at pottery and I’ve found a couple of vases which fit nicely. Unfortunately they’re Apulian vases.

This should be good news. Apulia is the heel of Italy, so these vases come from exactly the right place. Yet there’s very little archaeological record of these vases. Up to ninety per cent of Apulian vases were first known when they were put up for auction. It is possible that they were all stored in grandmothers’ attics during the Second World War. Indeed there are so many vases that it would suggest that the attic is the safest place to hide if you’re in a war zone. An alternative explanation is that a trade which is happy to buy artefacts with no provenance and no questions asked helps drive a demand for Apulian vases. What is more likely capacious attics or illicit smuggling? Who knows?

If I cannot provenance the vases then their use is limited. I’m trying to tie the observations to specific sites and ‘South Italy’ simply isn’t good enough.